On this Maundy Thursday we are happy to share a talk given by Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Eucharist.
The address, delivered in Italian last year in Rome, was translated by Donna F. Bethell, chairman of the board of directors of Christendom College, in Front Royal, Virginia. Her translation was approved by the bishop, and given to Rorate for the benefit of readers as the universal Church celebrates the institution of the Eucharist at Mass today. We ask that you share the content as a meditation on Holy Communion, but with credit to the translator and source.
May you, your parishes and your loved ones have a blessed Triduum.
 |
| Photo credit: Bohumil Petrik, Catholic News Agency |
"The
Treasure of the Altar: The Ineffable Majesty of Holy Communion"
Most
Rev. Athanasius Schneider, O.C.R., Auxiliary Bishop of Astana
Fourth Meeting on the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum
of His Holiness Benedict XVI
“A Treasure for All the Church”
Rome, the Pontifical University of St.
Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum)
13-14 June, 2015
1. Holy Communion is the treasure of the altar
The
Council of Trent teaches us: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, proclaiming himself a
priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek (cf. Ps 109: 4; Heb. 5:6),
offered to God the Father his body and his blood under the species of bread and
wine and under the same symbols gave to the apostles to take. ...He celebrated, in fact, the old
Pasch ...[and] instituted the new Passover, namely himself, that has to be
offered by the Church through his priests under visible signs. ...And St. Paul
says (1 Cor 10:21) that those who are contaminated by participating in the
table of demons cannot attend the Lord's table, table meaning in both cases the
altar" (Sess. XXII, chap. 1).
Christ sacramentally
anticipated the offering of the sacrifice of the Cross on the table of the Last
Supper. The visible altar of the Church, the Catholic altar, therefore also represents
the table of the Last Supper. However, in the proper sense the Catholic altar
indicates the Cross and the rock of Calvary, because the Eucharistic sacrifice
is not properly the actualization or sacramental representation of the Last
Supper, but of the sacrifice of the Cross, and is the "sacrament of the
sacrifice of the Cross."
For St. Augustine the
expressions "altar of God" and "table of God" are
synonymous (cf. Serm. 310, 2). In a
sermon the saintly Bishop of Hippo, explaining the martyrdom of St. Cyprian,
emphasized that the liturgical table was the place where the sacrifice is
offered to God: "You who know Carthage know that in the same place of the
martyrdom of St. Cyprian a table was erected to God, which is called then the
table of St. Cyprian, not because Cyprian would eat there, but because he was
slain there. So with his own sacrifice he prepared this table, not because he
eats there or gives us to eat, but because there we offer the sacrifice
[Eucharistic] to God, to Whom St. Cyprian offered himself in sacrifice" (Serm. 310, 2, 2). Christ has redeemed
the world not with the celebration of the Last Supper, but with the offering of
His bloody sacrifice on the Cross. Otherwise he could ascend to heaven after
the celebration of the Last Supper.
Ephrem said that the table of the Last Supper was already an altar for
Christ (cf. Serm. de hebd. sancta, 2,
8). In Hymns of the Crucifixion, "the harp of the Holy Spirit,"
as he was called by Pope Benedict XV, spoke thus: "Ipse [Christus] altare et agnus, victima et sacrificator, sacerdos et
esca" (3, 2). ["[Christ] Himself is the altar and the lamb, the
victim and the sacrificer, the priest and the food."]
During the golden age of the
Church Fathers we find the expression "sacrament of the altar" as a
designation for Holy Communion, especially in the writings of St. Augustine (cf. Serm. 59, 3, 6). To emphasize the
truth that Holy Communion is the fruit of the true sacrifice that takes place
on the altar, St. Augustine said in one of his sermons: "Nos de cruce Domini pascimur, quia corpus Ipsius manducamus"
(Serm. 9, 10, 14): "We are fed
from the cross of the Lord, for we eat His body." Inviting neophytes to
approach the altar with fear and trembling to receive Holy Communion, the
saintly Bishop of Hippo recalled that they receive the sacred food from the
Cross: "Hoc agnoscite in pane, quod
pependit in cruce; hoc in calice, quod manavit ex latere" (Sancti Augustini sermones post Maurinos
reperti: Miscellanea Augostiniana
I, 19): "Acknowledge in the bread what hung on the Cross, and in the chalice
what dripped from his side." St.
Basil of Cesarea designated the distribution of Holy Communion with the
expression "to give the sacrifice" and to receive Holy Communion as
"receive the sacrifice" (cf. Ep. 93).
Receiving Holy Communion is at
once a confession of the truth of the sacrifice of the Cross. So taught the
Council of Trent: "Our Lord ... leaving a memory of His wonders (Ps 110:4)
commanded us, when we receive Him, to honor His memory and to proclaim His
death until He comes" (Sess. XIII,
Sec. 2).
It is the mystery of
transubstantiation that makes possible the union with the sacrifice of Christ,
not only by means of faith and love but also through the consummation of the
victim present under the sacramental signs (cf. Journet, Ch., Le Mystère de l'eucharistie, Paris 1981,
p. 57). At the moment of Holy Communion the radiance of the bloody Cross is
among us, though wrapped in the sweetness of the liturgical rite (cf., ibid.).
Cardinal Journet admirably sums up this truth, saying: "All the drama of
the Cross and bloody redemption of the world are transmitted in the ineffable
silence, in sweetness, in the peace of the non-bloody sacrifice" (ibid., p. 71).
In his meditations on the
Gospel, Bossuet described in these words of high mysticism the intimate
connection between the sacrifice of the Cross and Holy Communion: "So you
are my victim, my Savior! But if I were to limit myself to contemplate your
altar and your Cross, I would not be quite convinced that it is to me, it is
for me that you will offer yourself. But now that I eat, I know, I sense, so to
speak, that it is to me that you offer yourself ... If you have offered
yourself to me, then, it is a sign that you love me, because who gives his life
for anyone if not for his own friends? I
eat in union with your sacrifice; consequently, with your love: I enjoy your
love entirely, for all its vastness; I perceive it as it is: I am penetrated.
You come to put this fire in the bowels, that I love you with a love like
yours. Ah! I see now and know that you
have taken this human flesh for me; that you have endured infirmities for me;
that you have made the offering for me; it is mine. I just have to take it, eat
it, own it, unite myself to it. You were made incarnate in the womb of the
Blessed Virgin, but you have not taken a single flesh: now you take the flesh
of us all, mine in particular: you take it to yourself, it is yours: you make
it like your own with your contact, with your action: first of all pure, holy,
undefiled; afterwards, immortal, glorious: I will receive the character of your
resurrection, provided I have the courage to receive that of your death" (Meditazioni sul Vangelo. La Cena, 23,
cited in: Esposizione del dogma
cattolico. Conferenze. Vol. XII. Eucaristia,
Turin-Rome 1950, 176, n. 10).
2. Holy
Communion and the Divine majesty
The Council of Trent teaches
us: "The sacrament of the Eucharist is no less worthy of worship because
it was instituted by Christ the Lord to be taken as food. We believe it is this
same God, of whom the eternal Father, introducing him into the world, said:
worship him all the angels of God (Heb 1: 6) "(Sess. XIII, Ch. 5). The same council warned (cf. Sess. XIII, Ch. 8) that all the faithful
must always be mindful of such great majesty and incomparable love of Christ,
who gave us His life as the price of our salvation and His flesh as food:
"memores tantae Maiestatis et tam
eximii amoris Iesu Christi Domini nostri" ["the remembrance of
such Majesty and the incomparable love of our Lord Jesus Christ"].
The famous French Dominican preacher G.
Monsabré spoke these moving words of the majesty of Christ at the time of Holy
Communion: "It is certainly an honor for us to receive so great a guest,
and is not too much to summon all our powers and our virtue to celebrate and
worship, when, under the humble robe that covers his majesty, he sends his
angels to knock at the doors of our soul. Attolite
portas! Lift up your gates! they say, and the King of glory will come in: Et introibit
rex gloriae (Ps. 23: 9). The doors open and our petty nature becomes, for
Communion, the palace of the King of eternal glory: you can bow down before a
communicant, as before a tabernacle "(Esposizione
del dogma cattolico. Conferenze. Vol. XII. Eucaristia, Turin-Rome 1950,
174-175).
In his encyclical and testament Ecclesia de Eucharistia, St. John Paul
II emphasized the inherently sacrificial and highly sacred and adorable aspect of
the Eucharistic banquet, that of Holy Communion: "If the idea of the
'banquet' inspires familiarity, the Church has never succumbed to the
temptation to trivialize this 'intimacy' with her Spouse by forgetting that he
is also her Lord and that the 'banquet' always remains a sacrificial banquet
marked by the blood shed on Golgotha. The
Eucharistic Banquet is a truly 'sacred' banquet, where the simplicity of
the signs conceals the unfathomable holiness of God: 'O Sacrum Convivium, in quo Christus sumitur!' The bread which is
broken on our altars, offered to us as pilgrims journeying along the roads of
the world, is 'panis angelorum,' the bread of angels, which cannot be
approached except with the humility of the centurion in the Gospel: “Lord, I am
not worthy that you should come under my roof” (Mt 8.8; Lk 7:6). With this heightened sense of mystery, it is
understandable how the faith of the Church in the mystery of the Eucharist has
found historical expression not only in the demand for an interior disposition
of devotion, but also through a series of
outward forms meant to evoke and
emphasize the grandeur of the event celebrated " (Nos. 48-49).
The ineffable majesty of Holy Communion is an
infinite majesty, as the sacramental body and blood of Christ are united
hypostatically to the second Divine Person. The mystery of the Eucharist, particularly
Holy Communion, is designated in the patristic writings frequently with the
terms "sacramenta Caelestia"
("heavenly sacrament") and "mensa
mystica" ("mystical table").
With the qualifiers "Caelestia"
and "Mystica" the Fathers
of the Church wanted to indicate the ineffable and Divine majesty inherent in
the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist and especially
in the reception of Holy Communion. The expressions "heavenly gifts"
or "mystical gifts" were synonyms for Holy Communion.
This Divine majesty present in the mystery of
the Most Holy Eucharist, however, is a hidden majesty. Under the Eucharistic
species is "Deus maiestate
absconditus" ["the hidden God of majesty"]. St. Peter Julian Eymard, a modern apostle of
the Eucharist, spoke notably on the truth of the hidden majesty of Christ in
the Eucharistic mystery. He left us
admirable reflections such as this: "Jesus with a veil covers his power
because otherwise I would be afraid. He
covers with a veil his holiness, the sublimity of which would discourage our
few virtues. A mother talks to her child in a childlike way down to his level.
In the same way Jesus makes himself little with the little to elevate them to
Himself. Jesus hides his love and warmth. His ardor is such that we would be
consumed if we were exposed directly to its flames. Ignis consumens est. The fire is consuming. God is a consuming
fire. In this way the hidden Jesus strengthens us against our weaknesses. ...
This darkness [of the hidden majesty] requires of us a very worthy sacrifice,
the sacrifice of our intellect. We have to believe even against the testimony
of our senses, against the ordinary laws of nature, against our own
experience. We have to believe only in
the mere word of Jesus Christ. There is only one question: "Who is
there?" -- "It is I," replies Jesus Christ. Bow down and worship
Him! ... Instead of being a test, this veil becomes an incentive, an
encouragement to have a humble and sincere faith. Man wants to penetrate a veiled truth,
discover a hidden treasure, conquer a difficulty. Similarly, the faithful soul searches for the
Lord in the presence of the Eucharistic veil as Magdalene searched at the tomb.
The Eucharist is to the soul what God is to the blessed in heaven: a truth and
a beauty ever ancient and ever new, which man does not tire of scrutinizing and
contemplating. Just as in this world
love lives from happiness and desires, so also the soul is happy and desires
happiness through the Eucharist; the soul eats and is still hungry. Only the wisdom and goodness of our Lord could
invent the Eucharistic veil" (The
Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 92-94).
3. The
cult of the treasure of the altar and the majesty of the Eucharist
You receive a treasure only
with clean hands and often with hands covered with a veil or with gloves. If
this already applies to a material treasure, should it not apply all the more to
the greatest treasure that exists here on earth, that is, the treasure of the
altar, the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharistic species? There is no other way to approach the Divine
majesty, but with a pure soul, humble and loving. The Eucharistic liturgy and
especially the time of reception of Holy Communion therefore require simultaneously
an external worship of utmost reverence, an inner purity that is called the
state of grace, and a psychological attitude of keen attention and exquisite
delicacy.
Our time is marked by an unprecedented and
widespread liturgical and Eucharistic crisis due to the practical negligence of
the truth that the Eucharist, that is Holy Communion, is the treasure of the
altar of the Cross and ineffable majesty.
Therefore the following admonitions of Trent remain relevant today more
than ever: "No other action taken by faithful Christians is so holy and so
divine as this tremendous mystery, in which each day that life-giving host, by
which we were reconciled with God the Father, is sacrificed by priests to God
on the altar, and it is equally clear that you must use every effort and
diligence for it to be celebrated with the greatest purity and inner
transparency and an outer attitude of devotion and piety " (Sess. XXII , Decretum de observandis et vitandis). The Council complains that
many elements foreign to the dignity of the sacrament have been introduced, and
for the purpose of restoring due honor and worship, states that the bishops
will take care and are required to prohibit and eliminate any irreverence that
has been introduced, which is hardly separable from impiety. This appeal of the Council of Trent remains
relevant even today, when liturgical and Eucharistic irreverence has reached
frightening proportions.
The Dominican theologian A.- G. Sertillanges
stated that the centrality of the Eucharistic mystery ought to be unequivocally
reflected in architecture and in rite: "The entire Christian church is
oriented towards the tabernacle: naves lead us to the tabernacle, and the apses
crown it, the domes cover it ... the plan of the building is in the form of a
cross to remember the place where the sacrifice is made"(L'Eglise, Paris, 1931, I, 267-268). The
same idea has been formulated in a concise and admirable expression from the
famous theologian of the Eucharist M. De La Taille: "Sicut igitur Ecclesiarum nostrarum aedes in orientem solem spectant ita
et Sacramentorum nostrorum agmen Totus tutusque Cultus christianus atque
ecclesiastica disciplina respicit ad Eucharistiam, in qua visitavit nos Oriens
ex alto" ["Therefore, as the buildings of our churches look
toward the sun in the east, so the flow of our Sacraments, the whole and secure
Christian Cult and ecclesiastical discipline look to the Eucharist, in which
the Orient from on high has visited us"] (Mysterium Fidei, Paris 1931, 575).
To emphasize the truth that the Eucharist is
the true treasure of the altar, the image of the Crucifixion must again be
combined immediately with the altar, and this image should be a salient and
dominant feature. The image of the Crucifixion should not be put between the
priest and the people, otherwise the figure and the face of the priest
inevitably become the focus of attention. The eyes of the priest and the people
are instead facing the same direction towards the dominant image of the
Crucifixion. And this will help because with the inner eyes all present are
more conscious that they celebrate the sacrifice of the Cross, from which they
receive the true treasure that is the body of Christ in Holy Communion.
To emphasize the ineffable majesty of Holy
Communion, we must where possible reintroduce altar rails, which are already in
themselves a silent appeal to all communicants to greet and receive the Divine
hidden majesty in the moment of Holy Communion with the spontaneous gesture of
kneeling, that is of corporal and visible humility.
Saint Peter Julian Eymard said:
"In the worship of God, everything is great, everything is divine. ... The
Holy Roman liturgy is therefore supremely august and authentic. It comes from
Peter, head of the apostles. Each pope kept it and passed it with all respect
to the subsequent centuries, knowing how to add in conformity with the needs of
faith, piety, and gratitude new formulas, offices, and sacred rites. ... The
faithful who know how to respect the spirit of the liturgy and its ceremonies,
will continue to live the virtues and the love of those who during the mortal
life of the Savior were His first worshipers. Liturgical worship is the
exercise par excellence of all religion "(Direttorio degli aggregati del Santissimo Sacramento, Ch. II, art.
V, n. 1).
In all ages the true renewal of the Church
depends on correct and full faith in the Eucharist and, consequently, on
correct and full Eucharistic rite. The following solemn words of Blessed Paul
VI remain of great currency especially for our time: "The sacred signs of
the Eucharist ...indicate Christ present as he is living in eternal glory, but
here represented in the act of his sacrifice, to show that the sacrament of the
Eucharist in a bloodless way reflects the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the
cross, and makes those who worthily feed from the Body and Blood of Christ,
veiled in these signs of bread and wine,
participants of the benefit of redemption. So it is. So it is. ... We
say this also to dispel some uncertainties that have arisen in recent years by
trying to give elusive interpretations to the traditional and authoritative
doctrine of the Church in a matter of such importance. Then we say this to
invite all of you to fix your attention on this ancient and ever new message that
the Church still repeats: Christ, alive and hidden in the sacramental sign that
he offer to us, is really present. ... The Eucharist is mysterium fidei, the mystery of faith. Light most vivid, light most
sweet, light most certain for those who believe; rite opaque to the
non-believer. Oh! How decisive is the Eucharistic theme carried to this
decisive point! Those who accept it, choose. Choose with the vigorous
conclusion of Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life "(Jn. 6, 68)" (Homily
at the Eucharistic Congress in Pisa, June 10, 1965).
Faith in the treasure of the altar and in the
ineffable majesty of the Eucharist must not remain only in the realm of theory,
but be reflected and incarnated in appropriate and unambiguous gestures and
elements of liturgical architecture. The following liturgical prayer from the
Coptic Rite can strengthen us in this truth: "Amen. Amen. Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe. Until the
last breath of my life I will confess that this is the life-giving Body of Your
only Son, our Lord and our God, our Jesus Christ. He took this body from our
Lady and our Queen, the most pure Mother of God. He has joined it to his divinity. I believe that his divinity never, not even
for a moment, was separated from his humanity.
He has been given for the remission of sins, life and eternal salvation!
I believe, I believe, I believe that it is all so!" (Quoted in: Journet, Le mystère de l’Eucharistie, op.cit., 54).
